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ah! no night vision! GZ MG555 please help :(

Im very upset cuz i just bought my first camera. i love it, it has everything i need in a little camerafor a beginer like myself, but i am very upset because i just discoverd this camera does not have night vision! night vision is somthing i defintally would want to play with and would love to haveto make fun night videos especially camping or at the beach. im really dissapointed with this and was woundering if there were any kinds of filters or ne thing that can fix this...please help! thanks for any suggestions

I may be wrong, as I often am, but I think filters would just make things darker. I have a little Sony with the night vision thing... It's interesting, but not good for much. If you were shooting a clip where it was in the first person sight (if that is a term) and that person was looking through green night vision goggles, then that would maybe, probably be useful. I would suggest getting a light to go on your accessory shoe. You'll still get the night feel, but your colors will be much better than a night vision thingy.

Yea you're right...adding filters to the front of your lens slightly decreases the amount of light entering the lens. I have seen adapters that attach to the font of camera for night vision shooting though. Personally, I wouldn't be into that.

Just get a light like FallStarFilms suggested. That's probably your best bet.

Just a little FYI, the filters for using night shot camcorders are actually designed to let you activate the the mode while in normal lighting. I understand that in full daylight, you could use the infrared mode to see through clothing in certain situations. This is because of how the video chip reacts to light. Many modern pick-up chips have a great deal of sensitivity to infrared light, so they have an infrared filter over the chip. In Sony camcorders (and I assume other folks would have to do the same) the Nightshot Plus mode, removes that filter. But some users claim Sony also has some sort of electronics to prevent the Nightshot mode from working in daylight. I don't see that it would be neccessary as in daylight, infrared overexposes seriously. So anyway, if your camcorder doesn't have the ability to remove the built-in infrared reduction (to match what our eyes see) then it can't be used with infrared lighting (or in what we see as total darkness.)

Hi there, from what Ihave read having "night vision" onyour camera is pretty useless really. The most important thing your camera needs in order to focus properly and capture images IS light, so what some camera's offer in the way of "night vision" is really of little benefit. When I put my camera into night mode it completely slows down any movement making it blurry, wishy washy and basically unpleasant to watch.

Why not try utilising your car headlights if trying to capture some camping moments ?I read this somewhere on this forum and thought well duh!Completely forgot about THOSE lights.Might be worth experimenting with anyway. (I have yet to try this)Or try out different sorts of camping lights. Some are brighter than others.

I don't think you'll ever get really good quality footage shot in poor light unless you have some kind of really good artifical lighting to brighten things up.